Category Archives: Solar

Former Japanese PM Koizumi calls for zero nukes

Current PM Shinzo Abe was his chosen successor, and now Junichiro Koizumi (prime minister 2001-2006) calls on Abe to end nukes in Japan. Why? “A large majority of the population now understands that nuclear energy is the most expensive form of power generation.” For sure here in Georgia, with Georgia Power charging through the nose for power customers aren’t even receiving while trying to hike the price of solar power, too. Let’s end Plant Vogtle and get on with renewable solar inland and wind off the coast.

Wolf Richter wrote for Zerohedge 4 October 2013, The End Of Nuclear Energy In Japan?

And on August 26, his words made it into the Mainichi Shimbun. If he were an active politician, he’d want “to convince lawmakers to move in the direction of zero nuclear plants,” he said. Now would be the ideal time to move that direction. All 50 nuclear reactors were off line. All opposition parties favored zero nuclear power. It could be done “as long as the prime minister made the decision” — putting the onus squarely on his former protégé. And nuclear politics in Japan haven’t been the same since.

The next blast came on September 24 at a forum in Tokyo. He talked about his trip to Finland in August. The purpose was to inspect the Onkalo spent-fuel repository. He was accompanied by Continue reading →

Georgia Power wants to charge you for your solar power

Georgia Sierra Club’s Seth Gunning batted away Georgia Power’s proposed solar tax, which would charge about $22 a month for many new home solar installations. GA PSC needs to call Georgia Power’s proposal out, because it was a bad idea when Dominion Power did it in Virginia, and it would be a worse idea here in sunny Georgia. Besides, Austin Energy already established that the purported basis for such a solar tax is nonsense: actually, utilities should be paying more for home solar power because of the benefits they receive.

Jonathan Shapiro wrote for WABE yesterday, Georgia Power’s Proposed Solar Tariff Scrutinized,

The company is proposing an average tariff of about $22 per month for new home solar systems that aren’t a part of Georgia Power-sponsored solar initiatives.

Company officials argue the tariff is necessary because most solar users still require the power grid as a back-up when the sun isn’t shining. As solar use spreads, the company stands to collect less revenue from those customers. What doesn’t change is the cost to maintain the grid. Georgia Power says non-solar customers shouldn’t have to bear all the costs.

“We don’t want to contribute to the problem of shifting costs so before we do that we very much prefer to get these tariffs right so all customers benefit,” said Roberts.

PSC Chairman Chuck Eaton wondered if the tariff is about making up for lost revenue, why not consider new fees for any number of energy efficiency measures.

“What makes solar unique?” asked Eaton. Continue reading →

Solar panels in a store near you: Ikea follows Home Depot

Everybody’s liking Ikea selling solar panels in Britain, but Home Depot’s been doing that in the U.S. for four years now. And yes, you can order them here.

Malin Rising wrote for AP 30 Sep 2013, IKEA starts selling solar panels for homes,

Swedish flat-pack furniture giant IKEA will start selling residential solar panels at its stores in Britain, the first step in its plan to bring renewable energy to the mainstream market worldwide.

The company started selling solar panels made by China’s Hanergy in its store in Southampton on Monday. It will sell them in the rest of Britain in coming months, it said.

A standard, all-black 3.36 kilowatt system for a semi-detached home will cost 5,700 British pounds ($9,200) and will include an in-store consultation and design service as well as installation, maintenance and energy monitoring service.

Way back in December 2009 I blogged that Lowe’s was already selling solar panels and Home Depot, as well. I can’t find any on Lowe’s website at the moment, but Home Depot has kits for a variety of prices; sample in this table: Continue reading →

Florida Power and Light selected Sabal Trail for pipeline through Georgia

A Florida company selected a Texas company that can use eminent domain in Georgia to take your land. Does that seem right to you? Florida PSC has to review this pipeline. Where’s Georgia PSC on this?

FPL PR 26 July 2013, FPL selects Sabal Trail Transmission and Florida Southeast Connection to build new natural gas pipeline system into Florida,

Florida Power & Light Company today announced that its evaluation of proposals for additional natural gas transportation capacity determined that the best, most economical solution for ensuring Florida’s continued access to the clean, affordable, U.S.-produced fuel necessary to meet the growing electricity needs of the state’s residents and businesses is a combination of a natural gas pipeline and interconnection hub to be built by Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and a second natural gas pipeline to be built by Florida Southeast Connection, LLC….

Both Sabal Trail and Florida Southeast Connection will be interstate natural gas pipelines subject to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval and oversight.

In conjunction with today’s public announcement, FPL filed a petition for prudence review with the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC). Subject to PSC approval, Continue reading →

How fast industries can change: mobile phones and solar power

In only half a dozen years Microsoft went from laughing at the iPhone to admitting MS had none of the mobile phone or mobile device market, while Apple became the most valuable company in the world. Another entrenched industry, electric power will also change radically in only a few years, and solar power will win like the Internet did.

MG Siegler of Google Ventures blogged this on ParisLemon 20 September 2013, What A Difference Six Years Makes…

Steve Ballmer, 2007:

Steve Ballmer

Right now we’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year.

Steve Ballmer, a few months later:

It’s sort of a funny question. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody.

Now we’ll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.

Steve Ballmer, yesterday:

Mobile devices. We have almost no share.

And it wasn’t just Steve Jobs riding Moore’s Law on an iPhone: Continue reading →

Which first to get more solar: fight big money or new technology?

In Georgia we’re still below 1% electric power generation from solar, and we can get to 20-30% with no new technology whatever. Georgia Power’s nuke overruns are already causing a reaction of still more distributed solar. Yet even that good news gets the usual reaction: “This is necessary but not sufficient: a breakthrough in energy storage technology is required.” Which just ain’t so; distributed rooftop solar alone is plenty to move Georgia way ahead. That’s why Edison Electric Institute calls distributed solar a massively disruptive influence on the utilities’ century-old cozy baseload model. What’s holding solar back is those same big utilities, who understandably don’t want to change their long-time cash cow. But they’re going to change, and pretty quickly.

People unfamiliar with the sunny south (which is most of the world south of, oh, Germany), still say things like this: Continue reading →

Nuke overruns already causing distributed solar in south Georgia

People are tired of irresponsible trash government at the state level colluding with monopoly utilities to hold Georgia back in distributed solar power, and some of us are doing something about it; you can, too.

Jigar Shah wrote for SaportReport 15 September 2013 Solar more viable as Georgia’s new nuclear power plants face overruns,

I am seeing Georgia’s nuclear financial woes starting to prompt a boon for distributed energy including solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, low-impact hydro, high efficiency cogeneration, and other sources of electricity.

Biomass? Let’s not go back to that carbon-polluting forest-destroying factory-exploding waste of time and resources. Solar, wind, efficiency, and conservation are the main events, with solar increasingly leading the pack. And those nuke cost overruns are already driving solar up even faster: Continue reading →

GA PSC abdicates cost oversight for new nukes at Plant Vogtle

Finish it and then send we the taxpayers and ratepayers a bill? What kind of deal is that? So Southern Company already dodged a Fitch downgrade by delaying a decision, and now GA PSC wants to put it off for years more. That also delays solar deployment in Georgia, putting us still farther behind.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Ga. approves deal on nuclear plant costs,

A debate over the rising cost of building a nuclear power plant in Georgia will be delayed for years under an agreement approved Tuesday by Georgia’s utility regulators.

The elected members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission unanimously approved a deal that will put off a decision on whether Georgia Power can raise its budget for building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) until the first of those reactors is finished. An independent state monitor has estimated the first reactor will be finished in January 2018 at the earliest.

Regulators will continue monitoring company spending but will not make a decision on raising the bottom line budget figure.

So GA PSC will keep watching costs run over budget but will do nothing about it.

Oh, wait, it’s actually worse: Continue reading →

Bloomberg illustrates 63% solar growth in 2012

A graph Bloomberg New Energy Finance posted illustrates the recent 60%+ growth deployed solar capacity, but BNEF fails to project solar’s compound interest growth forward.

Look at the solar numbers in that graph:

2008200920102011 2012
1.6 2.0 2.9 4.9 8.0
Change 25% 45% 69% 63%

Then look at that last row I added, which is each year’s percentage increase over the previous year, as in 8.0 for 2012 divided by 4.9 for 2011 = 1.63 or 63%. Slightly more for the previous year, and less in years before that. In other words, the annual compound growth rate for solar is around the 65% rate reported by the solar industry.

And slightly higher than the 60.9% FERC rate I used Continue reading →

Pull out your phone, MacGyver, and take a picture of cars powered by rooftop solar

MacGyver needs to show an imprint on a floorboard to someone. Pull out your phone and take a picture! No, in 1986 he MacGyvers a chisel and hammer and pries the floorboard up.

Even in 1996 the telcos and most of the public thought dedicated copper and fiber connections were needed for reliable communications. (“Allison, can you explain what the Internet is?”)

But now you can pull out your phone and take a picture and post it over the packet-switched Internet to facebook for all the world to see.

In 2023 baseload nukes and coal plants and oil pipelines will be like phone booths connected by dedicated copper, while rooftop solar charging cars will be as common as phones in your pockets. Solar power will win like the Internet did, beating all other sources of power within a decade.

Meanwhile, Continue reading →